Events

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AIPSN Condolence Resolution: Admiral (retd) L.Ramdas, former Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy and distinguished citizen

click  to see the  pdf  or  jpg of the condolence resolution 

 

 

AIPSN Condolence Resolution:

Admiral (retd) L.Ramdas,

former Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy and distinguished citizen

 

The All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) deeply mourns the passing of Admiral (retd) L.Ramdas, former Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy and distinguished citizen who contributed as much if not more to this country in his post-retirement civilian life as he did during his meritorious military career.

The Indian Nay and a grateful nation will forever treasure the stellar role of  Admiral L.Ramdas during the liberation of Bangladesh and subsequently, as Head of the Navy, in leading the Armed Services in the induction of women.

Post retirement, Admiral (retd) L.Ramdas devoted himself to numerous causes for promoting peace, constitutional rights, secularism and peoples issues. AIPSN holds in high esteem its work with him in the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, the Pakistan-India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy; the struggle for safety and the lives and livelihoods of people affected by the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant; his continued support for and participation in the Konkan people’s movement against the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant; and against the growing communalism in the country.

AIPSN extends its heartfelt condolences to his wife, Lalita Ramdas, a fellow campaigner on many of the same and other issues, and to his daughters. We express our continued appreciation of their support to the cause of scientific temper and literacy.

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Lesson for Right To Health agenda : Learning From TamilNadu’s response to Covid19 pandemic

Click here if you want to browse the book  online like a flipbook

 

Click here to get the EPW article based on this work

 

Read the Tamil version of the EPW article

 

Click here to download the pdf in English of Learning-from-TamilNadu 

 

Read the Executive Summary in Tamil

 

Cover of book

Details of authors, publishers

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Condolence- Roddam Narasimha: an exemplar for future generations

click here for pdf of RoddamNarasimha-AIPSNCondolenceResoln

Roddam Narasimha: an exemplar for future generations

                 All India Peoples Science Network expresses its condolences over the passing away of one of India’s leading scientists, researcher and teacher Professor Roddam Narasimha (hereafter RN) in Bangalore on 14 December 2020 at the age of 87.  Born and brought up in Bangalore, he went to school and pursued higher education in mechanical engineering with a bachelor’s degree from Mysore University and Masters from the Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. At IISc he was mentored by Prof. Satish Dhawan, one of the founders of the indigenous Indian space programme and Director of IISc for over 20 years. RN went on to do his PhD under Prof. Hans Liepmann, who had also supervised Prof. Dhawan, from the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in the USA. Like many like-minded scientists of his generation who had studied abroad, he returned to India motivated to advance self-reliant science and technology in India, and embarked on a long career undertaking world class research, mentoring several generations of students, and contributing to building several advanced research institutions in India. RN went on to become Professor at IISc in the now renamed Department of Aerospace Engineering over a near four-decade period. . He became Director of the CSIR’s National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL), Bangalore, was closely associated with the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) for 14 years and was also Director, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore. Throughout he maintained his relationship with IISc.

RN made fundamental contributions to a number of areas in fluid mechanics, especially in studying turbulence, the transitions just from turbulent to laminar or normal flows as well as the reverse transition, parallel computing for fluid dynamics problems, and finally modeling of the monsoon. In a landmark paper published on the vibration of an elastic string RN derived an equation that has since been named after him. RN’s entire body of work excellently straddled the worlds of science and engineering. RN belonged to that early post-Independence generation of scientists who took on the challenging task of building scientific institutions in sovereign India, inspiring students to work on new scientific problems, and creating schools of scientific research while at the same time working on problems relevant to India’s developmental needs. RN was involved both as an engineering scientist in India’s aerospace industry and as a policymaker. At NAL he participated in a number of projects such as the development of the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), and initiated work on parallel computing for a number of applications.  He also pioneered numerical modeling of the monsoons, beginning with his involvement in establishing the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at IISc, where the now well-known Monsoon Trough Boundary Layer Experiment (MONTBLEX) was undertaken. Given the complexity of monsoon prediction, RN successfully lobbied for the formation of the Ministry of Earth Sciences. RN was deeply appreciative of the history of science and technology in India as evidenced by his classic paper on Tippu Sultan’s rockets and also took a balanced view of progressive and regressive trends within Indian society, as reflected in several writings and projects he undertook at NIAS and JNCASR. Current and future generations of scientists and engineers in India undoubtedly have an exemplary role model to look up too and emulate.

 

 

 

Contact

P.Rajamanickam, General Secretary AIPSN

gsaipsn@gmail.com, 9442915101

Twitter @gsaipsn

 

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Joint Letter to Govt of India endorsed by 8 organisations and 145 individuals on Arogya Setu and other apps introduced during Covid19 pandemic

Click here to see the  Gmail – Joint Letter on Aarogya Setu and other COVID-19 apps

Click here to see the Joint Letter on Aarogya Setu by IFF, JSA, AISPN, FMES and other organisations and concerned individuals

 

Click here to view in FMES site

To
Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India
Email: hfm@gov.in
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India
Email: ravis@sansad.nic.in
Dr. Shashi Tharoor, Chairperson, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology
Email: office@tharoor.in, legislation@tharoor.in
17 September 2020
Subject: Technical, legal, ethical and implementation concerns regarding Aarogya Setu and other
apps introduced during COVID-19 in India
Dear sir,
We, the eight organisations and 145 individuals, consisting of public health advocates, experts in digital privacy, science and technology policy advocates, researchers, lawyers, journalists, medical professionals, students and other concerned persons want to express our deep concerns regarding the Aarogya Setu (AS) and other similar Apps related to the novel Corona virus epidemic. We are deeply concerned about violation of privacy, and compromised ethical principles and values, due to the AS App’s design, its deployment, related policies regarding data storage, preservation of privacy and data sharing, as well as overall policy implementation and inadequate legal frameworks for data protection and grievance redressal for users.
We appreciate the need of the hour viz.:
1. the unprecedented nature and massive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in India
2. the need for a multi-pronged approach to contain the pandemic and minimize its adverse impact on all
domains of our lives
3. therefore the need for innovative approaches, including digital technology-based ones, that may be required to augment and complement other containment and mitigation measures. We believe that the key challenge is ensuring that a balance is struck between achieving greater public good and safeguarding individuals’ rights and freedoms in alignment with frameworks provided by the Constitution of India, public health ethics discourse, International Health Regulations 2005 (IHR 2005), the Siracusa Principles on Civil and Human Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In this context, we conducted a detailed analysis of the AS App purposed as a catch-all solution, its Privacy Policy, Terms of Services (henceforth ToS) and Aarogya Setu Data Access and Knowledge Sharing Protocol, 2020 (henceforth, Protocol), and its code available on GitHub taking into account the broader eco-system in which Aarogya Setu has been deployed and is being used. This is presented in the more detailed position paper (attached as Annexure 1) which informs this statement articulating key issues across five domains viz., technical and platform design; legal and policy frames; transparency and public engagement; eco-system in India in which the App has been deployed; and ethics and human rights.
The key issues that we want to highlight are as follows:
I. Technical and platform design domain
At a technical level, the AS App does not conform to key technical best practices being developed internationally.

The following major concerns arise:
1. The AS App collects people’s GPS trails about which many democracies, technologists and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have had concerns. It uses centralised social graph analysis to map interactions between individuals, thereby contravening the strongly supported decentralised data storage systems which safeguards citizens’ real-world activities. It also uses a static Device ID which is rudimentary, and is prone to risks of re-identification (i.e. the anonymised personal data may be matched with the actual person thereby exposing who the person is).
2. The AS App’s centralised data storage system enables exporting of people’s sensitive personal details to an external government-operated server which is linked with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) database and others. These are being provided to third parties such as research universities and private consultancy firms. Overall, this is an expansive approach to data collection and extraction, and clearly undermines privacy of people’s data.
3. The AS App categorizes people as being at high risk of COVID-19 simply based on the App’s opaque algorithm and inaccurate Bluetooth and GPS based proximity tracking. This creates a non-trivial risk of false positives and negatives, leading to other severe social, personal and public health consequences. The use of self-reported symptoms also runs the risk of people wrongly marking themselves as positive or negative.
4. The AS App is not accessible to people with disabilities, especially those with vision and hearing disabilities.
II. Legal and policy domain
1. Aarogya Setu App’s privacy policy or supporting documents such as its ToS and the Protocol, assert that data retention or deletion requirements do not apply to people’s data which has been “anonymised” and can therefore be seamlessly shared with third parties.

This raises three key issues:
a. standards of ‘anonymization’ are not defined in the ToS and the Protocol
b. standards if any are not shared with the user and no consent sought for using their “anonymized” data
c. there is no sunset clause for the personal data AS App collects. The, “sunset” is to the protocol rather than the underlying personal data. This evokes concerns of permanent surveillance
2. The data security and protection framework under the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011, are not applicable to government authorities, so there is no automatic or compulsory privacy protection
3. The voluntary Electronic Health Records Standards which provide certain privacy and security protocols for data disclosures during times of national priority, lacks suitable enforceability.
4. The latest draft of the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 introduced in India’s Parliament in December 2019 is insufficient. It grants omnibus exemptions to Governments for emergency/epidemic situations which is inconsistent with the contours of the right to privacy and reasonable restrictions during emergency situations as prescribed by the Supreme Court of India in its seminal right to privacy judgement in KS Puttaswamy v Union of India (2017).
5. Obligations under the IHR 2005 to which India is legally bound, require governments to ensure that national legislative frameworks relating to data sharing are adopted and be consistent with international human rights frameworks and foundational ethical principles. Lack of such legal framework in India implies lack of protection from potential commercial surveillance.
6. From a policy perspective, there is no independent institutional oversight on (a) public agencies and the businesses developing these Apps; (b) ethical and human rights aspects; and (c) the App’s actual deployment.

III. Transparency and public engagement domain
1. As per information in the public domain, Government of India (GoI), had initiated building of the AS App on March 19, 2020, and it was launched on April 2, 2020. As per standard best practice, GoI should have issued a technical whitepaper and consulted the public and external stakeholders before launching the App. However, even now, more than four months since the AS App’s launch, GoI has not published any such document.
2. The lack of a structured public debate and public engagement around the AS App raises questions about its quality, and about the adequacy of ethical, procedural or institutional safeguards to mitigate risks arising from such technological interventions.
3. The National Informatics Center (NIC) has informed the media that it opted for a public-private partnership model to develop the AS App. For example, For example, UX Design at MakeMyTrip has been a private volunteer in building these systems. This evokes concerns of commercial exploitation and risk to privacy of the data collected through the AS App.
4. The underlying source code of the AS App was also not released for the longest time which is, again, best practice in such cases. Eventually, the GoI released the source code but it has not yet released the server-side code or the cloud functions. Experts have observed that the source code released on GitHub is inconsistent with the App which is being used by the public. This has therefore only marginal value in terms of transparency and is inconsistent with globally accepted standards of open source software.
5. There is ambiguity in the key AS App documents namely ToS, Protocol, and Privacy Policy. These include inadequate information for AS App users about the type and purpose of data collected, where and for how long data will be stored, with whom these data will be shared and for what purposes. A NITI Aayog official has indicated that data collected via the AS App is feeding into the development of India/Bharat Health Stack and that raises various other concerns but will not be dealt with here.
6. There is inadequate transparency about the various data points and inputs the App’s algorithm relies upon to arrive at its risk scoring of users as green, yellow, orange or red.

IV. India’s eco-system in which AS App is deployed
1. Indian governance systems habitually work in silos and inter-departmental coordination is extremely weak. Potential usefulness of the deployment of AS App depends upon how well the App data and its processing system is linked to contact tracing, testing and treatment through a well-equipped and trained health system. Unfortunately, there has been surprisingly little information put out so far by concerned government agencies as to how such institutional linkages have worked and how the App data has been used.
2. innovations in collection and processing of citizens’ data must comply with broader legal and ethical frameworks and constitutional rights of citizens which have historically been weak and have come under increasing threat in recent times.
3. the fact that the Ministry of Home Affairs is steering this effort instead of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, conveys that instead of linkage with testing and treatment, the AS App is more likely being purposed as a tool for surveillance and movement control, potentially leading to social coercion.

V. Constitutional and human rights, and public health ethics
1. The Medical Council of India’s Code of Ethics does not cover protocols for health data in circumstances when it is shared with the Government
2. The Government’s push to make the App effectively mandatory erodes individual autonomy as guaranteed by the Constitution
3. Critically, effectively mandatory use of the AS App is inconsistent with a recent WHO guidance on ethical considerations in the use of digital proximity tracing technologies.
4. The AS App’s Protocol is insufficient since it does not offer any legislative foundation for the AS App. Fundamental rights under the Constitution cannot be restricted by the Government even for legitimate purposes without express legislative authorisation.
5. Further, the Protocol fails to be consistent with standards of necessity and proportionality called for by both IHR 2005 and the Siracusa Principles. Specifically, it does not incorporate substantive language which sufficiently reigns in the government’s ability to collect, store, process, retain and process people’s sensitive personal details.

Against this backdrop, our demands are as follows:
I. For proportionality: Three points of emphasis must be design and architecture of the AS app; transparency and effective public engagement; and limits to retention time and use of the data.
1. There is a constitutional obligation to adopt the least restrictive/intrusive measure to achieve the stated purpose. These thresholds can be benchmarked against known technological best practices and models, and the kinds of interventions adopted by other constitutional democracies. The design of interventions must also ensure that they do not disproportionately impact people from certain backgrounds, identities, and regions.
2. A full release of specifications including cryptography, anonymization specifications, Application Programming Interface (API) specifications, and Bluetooth specifications.
3. Release of the source code for the current version of the AS App, given the fact that the released code does not match with the one in use, and release of the server-side code.
4. Development of a comprehensive privacy impact assessment, articulating accompanying risks associated with large scale roll-out of the App.
5. Commitment (i.e. sunset clauses that are clearly present in primary legislation) to permanently destroy the data and systems being built via AS App at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
6. The AS App must not in any way be made mandatory by government or private actors;
7. Among other things, the focus must be on assuring the public that these are temporary interventions which will not devolve into permanent surveillance and monitoring systems.

II. For legality
1. Suitable legislation is required aim to hold the Union and State governments and private actors accountable for leakage or any inappropriate use of App data during epidemics and communicable disease outbreaks.
2. Under this, governments may only access patient data through hospital records, and must preserve patient anonymity.
3. These frameworks should be solely under the control of public health institutions.

III. For necessity: The government must establish:
1. The contextual necessity of the new technological interventions like the AS App which monitors people’s movements since this is already being done by other actors (like telecom service providers).;
2. Grounds for treating the existing government databases, such as those maintained by ICMR and other existing surveillance mechanisms and hospital records as inadequate for the current purposes of responding to the pandemic
3. The expected advantage of interventions for collection of health and related information is collected, the actual technical effectiveness of the interventions itself, and a detailed cost-benefit/privacy impact analysis to evaluate risks before rolling out such Apps
4. Necessity as a dynamic construct, and that it is embedded through the life cycle of the AS programme. Within it there is a need for continual review of the programme as regards principles of transparency and accountability.

IV. Oversight Structures and Processes
1. The required legislation must create independent institutions for oversight separated from the political executive.
2. Towards this end, the agencies/institutions concerned should publish periodic reports informing the public if, and to what extent, the App is augmenting the Government’s response in treating and containing the spread of Covid-19. Based on such feedback loops, these institutions should be empowered to make decisions for course correction or even discontinuation of the programme itself, and the permanent destruction of the systems created.

We hope that you will take cognisance of these concerns and address them urgently.

With regards
Apar Gupta – Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF)
Sunita VS Bandewar- Forum for Medical Ethics Society (FMES) and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan
Sulakshana Nandi- Jan Swasthya Abhiyan
P.Rajamanickam- All India People’s Science Network (AIPSN)

This letter has been endorsed by the following organisations, networks and individuals:
Organisational endorsements
Janchetna Sansthan Abu Road
Lok Manch New Delhi
Rethink Aadhaar Campaign India
Right To Food Campaign India

Individual Endorsements
1 Aayushman Aggarwal Student
2 Abha Feminist activist
3 Adarsh Ranjan Student
4 Akshayarka Deka Big Data Analyst
5 Alka Pawangadkar Translator/Trainer
6 Amar Jesani Editor, Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, Mumbai
7 Amitranjan Basu Doctor, Shaheed Hospital
8 Ammu Abraham Women’s rights and Civil liberties activist
9 Anand Nandakumar Lawyer
10 Anand Philip Independent Researcher, Bangalore
11 Anja Kovacs Director, Internet Democracy Project
12 Anurag Modi Social Activist, Shramik Adivasi Sanghatana, Madhya Pradesh
13 Apoorva Umap Student
14 Arindom Bora Student
15 Arundhati Dhuru Social activist, National convener NAPM
16 Arvind IT
17 Ashish Kothari Kalpavriksh, Pune
18 Assunta Pardhe Social worker and lawyer, Chief Functionary Chetna Mahila Vikas Kendra
19 Avi Student
20 Aysha Concerned citizen
21 Barathi Nakkeeran Independent Researcher
22 Barun Mukhopadhyay Professor (Retired), Indian Statistical Institute, Biological Anthropology Unit, Kolkata
23 Bindu Desai Retired Neurologist
24 Ch Narendra Senior Journalist, Hyderabad
25 Chayanika Shah Queer Feminist Researcher
26 Deepika Joshi Researcher, PUCL, Chhattisgarh
27 Deepriya Snehi Advocate
28 Devdutta Lawyer
29 Devika Shetty Independent mental health activist, Goa
30 Dharmesh shah Researcher
31 Divya Sornaraja Engineer
32 Dr.Ganesh Singh Dharmshaktu, Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedics, Government Medical College,         Haldwani Uttarakhand
33 Dr Shakeel Physician. The Polyclinic
34 Dr Shriyuta A Infosys fellow in Public Health, SEARCH, Gadchiroli
35 Dr Sylvia Karpagam Public health doctor
36 Dr. Harish Gupta Consultant Physician , Internal Medicine, Lucknow
37 Dr. J. Charles Davis Professor of Bioethics and Moral Theology
38 Dr. Kamaxi Bhate Professor Emeritus KEM Hospital
39 Dr. Mahesh Devnani Doctor, Hospital Administrator
40 Dr. Mohan Rao Former professor at the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU
41 Dr. Prashanth N S Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru.
42 Dr. Satendra Singh, Disability Rights activist & doctor at University College of Medical Sciences & GTB Hospital,         Delhi
43 Dr. V Visvanathan Computer Technologist
44 Dr.Mohan Rao Independent public health researcher
45 Dr.Tusharkanti Dey Retired Academician
46 Fatima A Castillo Researcher
47 Gargi Sharma Software Engineer
48 Geeta Seshu Journalist, Co-Editor, Free Speech Collective
49 Goldee kushwaha Student
50 Gurpreet Singh Digital Marketing Manager
51 Hari Prasad Tripathi Student
52 Hashim Khan Working, CGSACS – Deputy Director
53 Hrishikesh Bhaskaran Secretary, Swathanthanthra Malayalam Computing
54 Imtitangit Pongener Student
55 Indira C Public health researcher, Delhi
56 Jagannath Chatterjee Patient Advocate, Bhubaneswar
57 Jashodhara Dasgupta Independent researcher, New Delhi.
58 Jhuma Sen Associate Professor, JGLS
59 Joy Bhattacharjee Cloud Infrastructure Consultant
60 Jyotsna Tirkey Service, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan
61 K Ram Independent Educator
62 Kabi Activist
63 Kalyani Menon Sen Independent researcher
64 Kamayani Bali Mahabal Trainer Gender, Health and Human Rights, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Mumbai – Convenor
65 Kamlesh Khantwal State Coordinator BGVS and JSA Uttarakhand
66 Khrisha Shah Entrepreneur, Dysco (Co-Founder & CEO)
67 Kim Fernandes Delhi/University of Pennsylvania
68 Kiran Jonnalagadda Technologist
69 Leo Saldanha Researcher, Environment Support Group, Bangalore, India
70 Linda Chhakchhuak Concerned citizen
71 Madhuresh Kumar National Convener, NAPM
72 Mahathi Doctor
73 Mahesh Devnani Chandigarh
74 Maithreyi M R Consulting editor
75 Manavi Lawyer
76 Mansi Sood Advocate
77 Mary Mathai Scientist
78 Md Rushd Al Amin Student
79 Medha Kale Social activist and Translator, Trustee, Tathapi Trust Pune
80 Meena Gopal Researcher and activist, Forum against Oppresssion of Women
81 Mrinal Sharma Lawyer, Amnesty International India, Policy Advisor
82 Murali Advocate
83 Nagmani Rao Retired Academic, Citizen
84 Navneet Wadkar PhD Scholar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
85 Neelanjana Public Health Researcher, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Chhattisgarh
86 Nikhat Hetavkar Law student
87 Nilanjana Dey Marketer
88 Niraj Bhatt Researcher, Citizen consumer and civic Action Group
89 Niranjan Sathyamurthy Illustrator
90 Oishik Sircar Academic
91 Padmini Ray Murray Independent Researcher, Founder, Design Beku
92 Paranjoy Guha Thakurta Journalist, author, publisher and documentary film-maker
93 Paulomi Chakraborty Associate Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences
94 Peehu Pardeshi Teacher, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan member
95 Piyali Mitra Researcher, Forum for Medical Ethics, Member
96 Prabha Doctor
97 Pradeep Esteves Context India, Bangalore
98 Pranav Mattapalli Student
99 Praveer Peter Social Worker, Convenor, Solidarity Centre, Ranchi
100 Preethika Lawyer
101 Prof Dr Fatima Castillo Manila, Philippines
102 Prof Dr Siby George IITB, Mumbai
103 Raghav Mendiratta Lawyer
104 Rajalakshmi Independent
105 Rajendra Gadwal Social Activist, Samajwadi Jan Parishad
106 Rajendran Narayanan Assistant Professor, Azim Premji University
107 Ravi Duggal Independent Researcher and Activist
108 Ricky Saldanha Research & Insights professional
109 Rishab Bailey Lawyer and technology policy researcher, New Delhi
110 Roopashri Sinha Freelance research consultant
111 Rujvi Lawyer
112 Sagari Ramdas Veterinary Scientist, Food Sovereignty Alliance, India Member
113 S Saroja Director – Consumer Protection, Citizen consumer and civic Action Group
114 Saloni Madan Student
115 Sandeep K Shukla Professor
116 Sandeep Pandey Social activist, Vice President Socialist Party (India)
117 Sandhya Srinivasan Journalist
118 Sangeeta CEHAT
119 Santosh Mahindrakar Nurse
120 Saurabh Bhattacharjee Academia
121 Senthamil Selvan K. Health activist
122 Shals Mahajan Writer, Member, LABIA – A Queer Feminist LBT Collective
123 Shamim Meghani Modi Teacher, FMES
124 Sharmila IIT Bombay
125 Shatakshi Student
126 Siddharth Chakravarty, Researcher
127 Srijit Mishra, Bhubaneswar
128 Srinivas kodali, Independent Researcher
129 Srinivasan G , Technology Professional, Sochara – Volunteer
130 Subhashis Banerjee, Professor, IIT Delhi
131 Sudha N, Researcher & Activist
132 Sudhir Pattnaik Senior Journalist, Bhubaneswar
133 Sujata Gothoskar Researcher and activist
134 Sujata Patel Teacher and Researcher
135 Sujata Sethi Rohtak
136 Sukla Sen Peace Activist
137 Sumi Krishna Independent researcher, Bengaluru
138 Sunep Imsong Tech Lead
139 Sunil Tamminaina Research Scholar
140 Supriya Subramani Postdoc
141 Surbhi Shrivastava PhD Student
142 Swatija Retired
143 Tanvi Sharma Advocate, Volunteers Collective
144 Tara Murli Architect , Chennai
145 Vivek Divan Centre for Health Equity, Law & Policy: Indian Law Society, Pune

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Joint campaign by AIPSN-AIDWA: Science, not superstition, will help us tackle Covid-19

Science, not superstition, will help us tackle Covid-19.

Background note for a nation-wide AIDWA- AIPSN  campaign

 

Read here the campaign note in English , in Hindi 

Read here the Newsclick story on the joint campaign

 

On 23rd July 2020, All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) is commemorating the eighth death anniversary of Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, the revolutionary freedom fighter and tireless campaigner for progressive ideals, democratic rights, gender justice, and an upholder of the scientific outlook throughout her life. She was one of the founding members of AIDWA in 1981, and played a crucial role in taking the organization into the Hindi heartland. As a doctor based in Kanpur, UP, her clinic was a nodal centre for the organization, attracting women seeking medical help and unable to afford it; as well as a site for interaction and meetings of activists. Fortunate were the thousands of babies delivered there, as the parents did not have to worry about becoming impoverished in the process!

 

The All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) comprising 37 OrganizatioWwAns all over India, joins AIDWA in remembering and celebrating the enormous contributions of Dr. Lakshmi Sahgal. Significantly, she played a leading role in the founding of the Network in 1987 and was a champion of the battle against obscurantism, and for promotion of scientific temper.

 

The life and work of Dr. Lakshmi Sahgal assumes even greater relevance during the on-going Covid-19 epidemic during which obscurantist forces are playing on the fears of the people, particularly women, to spread superstitions and pseudo-scientific beliefs. . Many traditionalist practices which have no proven impact on Covid-19 are being advocated as cures or as having preventive properties. Under cover of the epidemic, attempts are being made by the Sangh Parivar to bolster socially conservative values, communal prejudices and patriarchal notions. This must be resisted unitedly by  progressive and democratic forces.

 

The message of science

The Covid-19 pandemic hit India in January 2020, and presented a challenge in the early days even to public health experts, doctors and scientists who were still learning about the novel Corona Virus. The Central Government and most State Governments, with the notable exception of Kerala as recognized worldwide,  were quite late in putting together a  coherent, rational understanding and communicating it effectively to the people. A knee-jerk  and badly implemented lock down, dramatic gestures like lighting diyas, clapping, hands, etc, initiated by none other than the PM himself, did not help matters.

 

Not surprisingly, as people desperately sought relief and protection from Covid-19, all kinds of myths and beliefs proliferated to fill the gaps. These included a number of home remedies like drinking warm water, standing in the sun, growing certain plants at home and so on. Such untested beliefs gained considerable popularity until, under pressure from scientists and people’s organizations and movements, public messaging became more coherent and science-based. AIPSN and other organizations of scientists, doctors and public health experts have been at the forefront of informing the public about the correct do’s-and-don’ts related to Covid-19 derived from WHO and ICMR guidelines and expert opinion. A number of popular practices  and home remedies gain acceptance as remedies because in 80% of cases the disease is self-limiting and the patient recovers without much intervention. .

The challenge meanwhile is to stop obscurantist forces and vested interests from using the uncertainty which still prevails, to spread their ideology, and to make their profits. The promotion of do-it-yourself home remedies or traditionalist treatments combine with misleading messages that “no treatment is available for COVID 19” and to distract from the governments failures to provide affordable quality medical care through rapid expansion of public health services. Although there is as yet no curative allopathic medicine, the scientific and medical communities have learned much about the virus and its effects, and are applying this knowledge in testing and treatment of Covid-19, especially in hospital settings with or without oxygen or ventilator support. Further, the search for definitive treatments and vaccines for prevention continues with emphasis on scientific validation especially through clinical trials so as to ensure safety and efficacy.  This isthe scientific approach. Unfortunately, some treatments are pushed even within modern medicine, cutting short scientific procedures, by corporate interests and their supporters in positions of power or influence, motivated by greed for profits or misplaced national pride. The undue haste in pressurizing hospitals to unrealistically accelerate clinical trials of a vaccine candidate, perhaps just to enable a triumphant announcement from the red fort on Independence Day, is a case in point, thwarted only by concerted opposition by the scientific and medical communities and informed public opinion.

Countering pseudo remedies and false propaganda

Some false remedies and fake claims take the form of peddling Covid “cures” or “treatments” in the name of Ayurvedic, homeopathic or other traditional formulations. None of these have any foundation even within these traditions, nor have they been subject to any scientific trials. Yet many such claims have been allowed to propagate. Even some Ministers at the Centre and in several States have made such claims. When the Union Health Minister or leading Government spokespersons were challenged on such claims, they have shied away from outright debunking them, instead saying they may be the “personal beliefs” of those Ministers or leaders.

 

The atrocious and brazen claim of a supposed Ayurvedic “cure” from Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali conglomerate emerged from this trend. The formulation from the Sangh Parivar-linked, politically well-connected Baba was all set for commercial launch based on  spurious “clinical trials,” when a public outcry by scientists, doctors and informed citizens forced the  Health and AYUSH Ministries to debunk this claim and even declare readiness to invoke the law against “magical cures and remedies.” Nevertheless, many so-called immune-boosters and other concoctions to supposedly help people fight-off Covid-19 continue to be propagated, cleverly taking care only not to use the word “cure!”

 

Pseudo-scientific claims have got validated because the party in power and supporting social forces have gone along with such notions. The Prime Minister’s calls for people to come to balconies or doorsteps and clang vessels, and later to shine torches or light lamps, to express support for doctors and health workers, were followed by twitter storms and social media posts claiming that India’s anti-Covid lamps were seen from space by NASA, or that “powerful radiations” or “vibrations” from these public displays would destroy the Corona Virus! No efforts were made by any Government or Sangh Parivar leader to contradict any of these fantastic claims. (Suffice it to say that the virus continues to spread alarmingly!) These kind of claims are being used not just to magnify the PM’s “superpowers,” but also to undermine the influence of science, rationality and critical thinking in society.

The Sangh Parivar and linked forces have also used the Covid19 pandemic to spread communal poison. One highly regrettable mass religious gathering in Nizamuddin, which acted as a superspreader, was used systematically over several months to demonize a particular religious minority as the major cause behind the pandemic. This was carried forward to stigmatize the entire community by spreading false rumours that positive cases from this gathering were deliberately spitting on others to spread the virus, or that buying vegetables from vendors belonging to this community was dangerous etc. The simple fact is, as science teaches us, that it is not the religion that matters but that there was a large gathering, with no physical distancing or other precautions being taken. Indeed, a recent occurrence at arguably the most popular temple in the country where large numbers of priests and devotees have been infected, sharply underlines this fact.

 

The Sangh parivar and linked forces have been utilizing social media to propagate superstitions, communal, traditionalist and obscurantist beliefs in a big way, which have to be countered, through powerful media campaigns of our own based on science.

 

Unmasking the use of religion to reinforce patriarchy. 

The other dangerous development is the invocation of supposed religious beliefs to reinforce obscurantist views and customs, especially by giving it a gender twist, with the virus being personized as an angry goddess. Observations made by AIDWA activists from different states provide some disturbing instances of this growing trend.

In Rajasthan, some well-known temples were surreptitiously opened despite the government’s ban on opening places of worship, by spreading rumours that the doors of the temple had opened “by themselves” and people, especially women, should offer prayers there to “placate the Corona virus.” Women have been told to dip their hands in kumkum water, or in cow dung in UP, and put their imprints on the walls of their homes to pacify “Corona Mai (Devi).”        In parts of Bihar, women are being prompted to go to nearby rivers, dress up and carry sindoor, bindi, sweets etc and take a dip just as they would during Chhat Puja, to appease an angry “Corona mai.” In some places, women get “possessed” and exhort “Corona mai” to go away. Unfortunately, it is observed that women from Dalit and OBC families are especially influenced to act in this manner. The idea of an angry “Corona goddess” is also being propagated in Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

Such notions of an angry or dangerous Goddess who must be appeased have been witnessed earlier too in India. Small pox was associated with female Goddesses, for example Mariamma in Tamil Nadu, and the pox itself was known as “Mata/ Amma/Ammai etc,” as chicken pox, measles etc are often termed even today. Part of this derives from ancient quasi-religious beliefs but also stem from deep-rooted patriarchal culture and ideologies ascribing evil, dangerous and power-hungry characteristics to women as witches, daayin etc.

In Telangana, pro-Sangh Parivar forces, often led by women, are leading “prabhat pheris” or dawn marches, propagating the idea that the Covid epidemic has struck because women have stopped performing pujas and other sanskari or traditional practices, and calling on them to restart them so as to drive away the Corona Virus. The intention is clearly to reinforce traditional patriarchal culture with a subservient role chalked out for women within the lakshman rekha drawn around the home.

In Odisha, pro-Sangh Parivar outfits have been campaigning that temples should not have been closed, and that the Supreme Court did not permit the Rath Yatra because it is pro-Muslim and pro-Christian! In fact, places of worship of almost all religious denominations have been kept closed by the respective religious institutions themselves and by government guidelines.  Where this has not happened, or has happened without observance of physical distancing and hand-hygiene, it has resulted in Covid positive cases spreading from such gatherings. Any rational and unbiased person would understand that the problem is not with the particular religion, but with the practices adopted. Here obscurantist forces are deliberately fanning and spreading communal prejudice, while at the same time devaluing science and rational thought and distracting everyone from governments’ responsibility to provide quality medical care.

In this context, AIDWA and AIPSN would launch joint campaigns starting from 23 July 2020 to combat propagation of superstitions and irrational beliefs by obscurantist forces. We will take inspiration from great fighters like Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, to arm people with science as against superstition, and to demand that the scientific temper enshrined in the Constitution be widely promoted. The campaign would resist attempts by the government and obscurantist forces to take us backwards , and instead uphold the values of secularism, gender justice, critical thinking and scientific temper, all of which are essential for building a forward-looking, democratic society.

 

The Joint AIDWA-AIPSN Campaign would be conducted throughout the country from 23rd July 2020 at least till the National Scientific Temper Day on August 20, the black day on which anti-superstition campaigner Dr.Narendra Dabholkar was murdered by right wing obscurantist forces.

 

 

 

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Press Release of the statement on AIPSN Response to Draft EIA Notification 2020

Click here for AIPSN-Press-Release-Statement-on-EIA-2020-July3

 

Press Statement on

AIPSN Response to Draft EIA Notification 2020

            It is deeply regrettable that the Union Ministry of Environment Forests & Climate Change (MoEFCC) has decided to press ahead with the Draft EIA Notification 2020 (hereafter Draft EIA 2020), despite many Organizations and Experts calling for extending the period for responses beyond 30 June 2020 given the continuing restrictions related to the Covid-19 pandemic. These restrictions have prevented grassroots level consultations, especially with nature-dependent and marginalized communities, that are required for fruitful public participation in discussions on Draft EIA 2020.

Nevertheless, the All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN), comprising 40 Peoples Science Organizations in 25 States/UTs, has held extensive consultations to the extent possible and has submitted its considered Response to Draft EIA 2020. While our response (click here or here ) contains clause-by-clause critiques and recommendations, a brief summary of salient points is presented here.

            The present Government, since it first took office in 2014, has embarked on a determined course to severely dilute Environmental Regulations and norms in India, and weaken monitoring by regulatory agencies, so as to advance the “ease of doing business” and give corporates greater freedom to set up and run projects at the cost of the natural environment, and at the expense of lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people dependent on it.  Environmental Regulations and systems for appraisal, approval and monitoring of projects have been painstakingly built up over the years under pressure from civil society organizations, affected communities and experts in the environmental and broader scientific community, all of whom have sought sustainable development while protecting the natural environment which sustains life itself.

Unfortunately, far from tightening these norms and closing the many loopholes that have crept in under pressure from vested interests, Draft EIA 2020 has further weakened environmental regulation, and reduced transparency and accountability. In fact, several provisions specifically seek to circumvent National Green Tribunal (NGT), High Court and even Supreme Court rulings based on EIA 2006 and objecting to many Orders/Notifications issued from time to time.

The major objectionable changes sought to be introduced through Draft EIA 2020 include:

 

●        re-classification of various types of Projects, with a number of them potentially having considerable environmental impact being placed in Category B2 under which no Appraisal or public consultation/hearing is required: eg. Oil and Gas exploration (such permission was given in the fertile Cauvery delta region leading to farmer uproar in Tamil Nadu and subsequent withdrawal of permission), Water Aerodromes, River Waterways and other projects requiring dredging of river beds (cleverly dropped in Draft EIA2020 from the definition of “capital dredging” which it clearly is), Construction and Area Development Projects of 20,000-50,000 sq.m area (NGT had earlier ruled against an attempt to exempt projects of 20,000 to 150,000 sq.m , therefore this attempt in Draft EIA2020); and “linear projects” which would only be appraised and public consultations held in those districts of National Park, Sanctuaries or Coral Reefs through which they pass (exempting huge tracts through which pipelines etc may traverse)

●        another set of Projects with significant environmental impact are now exempted from obtaining Prior Environment Clearance, (a provision originally meant for artisan groups such as Potters etc for excavating of clay) such as Solar Photo Voltaic (SPV) power projects, Solar Thermal power plants, Solar Parks, coal and mineral exploration, and another vague category of “R&D Projects,” Minor Irrigation Projects of upto 2000 ha command area, Hazardous Waste recycling units etc, Defence and Explosives Manufacturing Units,

●        defence and national security projects, including projects deemed to be “strategic” by the Central Government,” are to be exempt from Appraisal and public hearings, with the added proviso that that “no information relating to such projects shall be placed in public domain:” classified information of military/security projects need not be disclosed, but external aspects with impact on environment such as area covered, construction in coastal regions, air pollution and/or liquid effluents discharged etc should be disclosed and appraised; further, the declaration of some projects as “strategic” is vague, non-transparent and open to misuse for hiding all kinds of projects from public scrutiny

●        notice period for public to respond to Public Consultations reduced from the earlier already inadequate 30 days to a mere 20 days now

●        among the most egregious provisions of Draft EIA 2020 related to violations i.e. projects starting construction or operations or expansion/modernization without receiving prior Environment Clearance (EC) would henceforth be given post-facto EC and permitted to continue after paying small fines: (the Vizag LG Polystyrene plant was operating without EC and was seeking post-facto approval) NGT and Supreme Court  have repeatedly ruled post-facto EC to be violative of environmental laws, and Draft EIA 2020 attempts to subvert these rulings by incorporating such provisions in the Notification  

               

 

For clarifications contact:

P. Rajamanickam  9442915101    D. Raghunandan  9810098621